…By putting up Christmas lights on the house while wearing my ‘Blasphemy is a blast for me‘ t-shirt:
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
[More shirts can be found at Evo-T’s.]
Halloween 2011 (retrospective)
Behind as usual, my Halloween review.
As with pretty much everything else in life lately I was feeling rather unmotivated about Halloween this year, especially, my thinking went, given the fact that Halloween fell on a Monday. I figured there wouldn’t by much trick-or-treat traffic in our already low traffic area, so I was not really planning to do much in the way of decorating.
However my motivation was restored by a trip to the annual LA Live Steamers Halloween Ghost Train in Griffith Park (Los Angeles). One of our tenants, ‘Pineapple’, works for the railroad and volunteers for various railroad activities and charities and knowing my fondness for all things Halloween he invited me to be amongst the friends and family of that get to ride the first couple of Ghost Trains for the evening (the Saturday before Halloween).
On my way down to Griffith Park I wanted to make a stop at a favorite used book store in Pasadena, Archives Books (a theological bookstore with a ‘healthy’ selection of creationist books) but I got a bit lost on some side streets and ended up getting a rare glimpse of the Ghostbusters mobile (I’m sure Halloween is a busy time of year for them):
Happy Halloween!
A happy and spooky Halloween to one and all!
Avast Me Hearties!
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day ye scurvy bilge rats!
This be the likeness of Pirate Queen, Scarlett Harlott, cast yer eyes upon her site or be cursed fer certain!
May yer seas be calm, yer rum flow freely and yer booty be bountiful!
Darwin’s Pigeons
The Carnival of Evolution #38 is up!
And it’s a doozy! I know I say something like that every month and I mean it, but this time it’s truer than ever. This months host is the estimable Larry Moran (Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto) on his excellent blog Sandwalk.
There are lots and lots of great links to evolution related articles for you to peruse (even if none of them are mine because my opus on creationists and arthropods keeps getting longer and longer).
As a bit of housekeeping I am going to list links to the past CoE below so I can clean up the blog a bit (all those green glowy spheres make me feel bad about not being more productive /honest self reflection).
- Carnival of Evolution #37
- Carnival of Evolution #36
- Carnival of Evolution #35
- Carnival of Evolution #34
- Carnival of Evolution #33
- Carnival of Evolution #32
- Carnival of Evolution #31
- Carnival of Evolution #30
If you missed any of these you’ll definitely want to go check them out!
Inside Nature’s Giants – Polar bear
This is the latest in the wonderful Inside Nature’s Giants television series (U.K.) and while it unfortunately (at least as far as I’m concerned) spends more time on environmental issues than anatomy, it is still definitely worth watching; so here you go, enjoy:
Help the TalkOrigins Archive’s bid to buy “Expelled”
Premise Media, the production company that produced the creationist pseudo-documentary “Expelled“, has gone bankrupt and is putting the film up for auction. The opportunity having presented itself, the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation is making a run at acquiring it.
Getting the rights to the film and related production material (unedited interviews of scientists etc.) could be an invaluable source of ammunition in the defense of science education against the attacks of intelligent design creationists, so if you’re able please consider making a donation to the Foundation (if the bid is unsuccessful your money still goes to a worthy cause) .
Update: TalkOrigins lost the biding war. Oh well, it would have been interesting.
Evolution is fish giving birth to frogs?
New evolution signage
The latest in my “just for kicks” collection of evolution related signage:
Thanks to Ryan for taking the picture with his phone for me.
Playing Chess with Pigeons 